<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES</FONT></center><br><br>

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HEIGHT="126" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0" ></FONT>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2" FACE="Times">CHAPTER XXII</FONT>

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<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">I</FONT></center>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">THE BALFOUR MISSION TO THE UNITED

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STATES</FONT>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">I</FONT>

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<br><br>PAGE now took up a subject which had been near his heart for

<br><br>PAGE now took up a subject which had been near his heart for

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Frank L. Polk</FONT></I>

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<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To Frank L. Polk</FONT></I></center>

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<br><br>London, May 3, 1917.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>London, May 3, 1917.

<br><br>DEAR MR. POLK:

<br><br>DEAR MR. POLK:

<br><br>. . . Mr. Balfour accurately represents British character,

<br><br>. . . Mr. Balfour accurately represents British character,

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afterward. That's all we need to bring about a perfect understanding.

afterward. That's all we need to bring about a perfect understanding.

<br><br>You may remember how I tried to get an official report about

<br><br>You may remember how I tried to get an official report about

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the behaviour of the <I>Benham,</I>(<A NAME="n171"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#171">171</A>)<I>

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the behaviour of the <I>Benham,</I><ref>The reference is to the attack made in October, 1916, by the German Submarine U-53, off Nantucket on several British ships. An erroneous newspaper account said that the Benham, an American destroyer, had moved in a way that facilitated the operations of the German submarine. This caused great bitterness in England, until Page showed the Admiralty a report from the Navy Department proving that the story was false</ref><I>

</I>and how, in the absence of that, Lord Beresford made a disagreeable

</I>and how, in the absence of that, Lord Beresford made a disagreeable

speech about our Navy in the House of Lords, and how, when months

speech about our Navy in the House of Lords, and how, when months

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later you sent me Roosevelt's(<A NAME="n172"></A><A HREF="Pagenotes.htm#172">172</A>)

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later you sent me Roosevelt's<ref>This, of course, is Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1917.</ref>

letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and said that he

letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and said that he

would explain in another speech. I hadn't seen the old fellow

would explain in another speech. I hadn't seen the old fellow

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<br><br>As we get reports of what you are doing, it's most cheerful.

<br><br>As we get reports of what you are doing, it's most cheerful.

I assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody equal to the

I assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody equal to the

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American people; and I don't think He ever will or can.

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American people; and I don't think He ever will or can.</BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>Sincerely yours,

<br><br>Sincerely yours,

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>

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</BLOCKQUOTE>

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I>

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<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I></center>

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<br><br>London, May 4,1917.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>London, May 4,1917.

<br><br>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

<br><br>DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

<br><br>. . . It is a remarkable commentary on the insularity of the

<br><br>. . . It is a remarkable commentary on the insularity of the

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live near the sea which yields fish enough near shore to feed

live near the sea which yields fish enough near shore to feed

them wastefully.

them wastefully.

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<br><br>All along this South shore, where I am to-day,(<A NAME="n173"></A><A

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<br><br>All along this South shore, where I am to-day,<ref>This letter is dated London and was probably begun there. It is evident, however, that the latter part was written at Brighton, where the Ambassador was taking a brief holiday.</ref>I see the Stars and Stripes;

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HREF="Pagenotes.htm#173">173</A>) I see the Stars and Stripes;

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and everywhere there is a demand for the words and music of the

and everywhere there is a demand for the words and music of the

Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Star Spangled Banner.

Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Star Spangled Banner.

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impossible, life will not be worth being born into except to

impossible, life will not be worth being born into except to

the few whose days happen to fall between recurring devastations

the few whose days happen to fall between recurring devastations

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of the world.

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of the world.</BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>Yours sincerely,

<br><br>Yours sincerely,

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>WALTER H. PAGE.</BLOCKQUOTE>

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</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">From Frank L. Polk</FONT></I>

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<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">From Frank L. Polk</FONT></I></center>

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<br><br>Washington, May 25, 1917.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>Washington, May 25, 1917.

<br><br>MY DEAR MR. PAGE:

<br><br>MY DEAR MR. PAGE:

<br><br>I just want to get off a line to catch the pouch.

<br><br>I just want to get off a line to catch the pouch.

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we really are in the war. I do not think it is thoroughly borne

we really are in the war. I do not think it is thoroughly borne

home on the majority yet what a serious road we have chosen.

home on the majority yet what a serious road we have chosen.

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<br><br>With warm regards,

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<br><br>With warm regards,</BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>Yours faithfully,

<br><br>Yours faithfully,

<br><br>FRANK L. POLK.</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>FRANK L. POLK.</BLOCKQUOTE>

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</BLOCKQUOTE>

<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">II</FONT>

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<CENTER><FONT SIZE="+2">II</FONT></center>

<br><br>One of the first things which Mr. Balfour did, on his arrival

<br><br>One of the first things which Mr. Balfour did, on his arrival

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<br><br>.

<br><br>.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>

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<P ALIGN=CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I>

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<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">To the President</FONT></I></center>

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<br><br>March 5, 1917.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>March 5, 1917.

<br><br>The inquiries which I have made here about financial conditions

<br><br>The inquiries which I have made here about financial conditions

<CENTER><I><FONT SIZE="+1">Mr. Balfour to the President</FONT></I></center>

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<br><br>June 30, 1917.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><br><br>June 30, 1917.

<br><br>The forces at present at the disposal of the British Admiralty

<br><br>The forces at present at the disposal of the British Admiralty

are not adequate to protect shipping from submarine attack in

are not adequate to protect shipping from submarine attack in

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offensively against a submerged submarine it is useless, and

offensively against a submerged submarine it is useless, and

the large majority of the ships torpedoed never see the attacking

the large majority of the ships torpedoed never see the attacking

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submarine until the torpedo has hit the ship.(<A NAME="n175"></A><A

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submarine until the torpedo has hit the ship.<ref>The Navy Department had taken the position that arming merchantmen was the best protection against the submarine. This statement was intended to refute this belief.</ref>

Latest revision as of 23:57, 7 February 2009

PAGE now took up a subject which had been near his heart for
a long time. He believed that one of the most serious causes of
Anglo-American misunderstanding was the fact that the leading
statesmen of the two countries had never had any personal contact
with one another. At one time, as this correspondence shows, the
Ambassador had even hoped that President Wilson himself might
cross the ocean and make the British people an official visit.
The proposal, however, was made before the European war broke
out, the occasion which Page had in mind being the dedication
of Sulgrave Manor, the old English home of the Washington family,
as a perpetual memorial to the racial bonds and common ideals
uniting the two countries. The President found it impossible to
act upon this suggestion and the outbreak of war made the likelihood
of such a visit still more remote. Page had made one unsuccessful
attempt to bring the American State Department and the British
Foreign Office into personal contact. At the moment when American
irritation had been most keen over the blockade and the blacklist,
Page had persuaded the Foreign Office to invite to England Mr.
Frank L. Polk, at that time Counsellor of the Department; the
Ambassador believed that a few conversations between such an intelligent
gentleman as Mr. Polk and the British statesmen would smooth out
all the points which were then making things so difficult. Unfortunately
the pressure of work at Washington prevented Mr. Polk from accepting
Sir Edward Grey's invitation.

But now a greater necessity for close personal association
had arisen. The United States had entered the war, and this declaration
had practically made this country an ally of Great Britain and
France. The British Government wished to send a distinguished
commission to the United 'States, for two reasons: first, to show
its appreciation of the stand which America had taken, and second,
to discuss plans for cooperation in the common task. Great Britain
frankly admitted that it had made many mistakes in the preceding
three years---mistakes naval, military, political, and economic;
it would welcome an opportunity to display these errors to Washington,
which might naturally hope to profit from them. As soon as his
country was in the war, Page took up this suggestion with the
Foreign Office. There was of course one man who was preeminently
fitted, by experience, position, and personal qualities, to head
such a commission; on this point there was no discussion. Mr.
Balfour was now in his seventieth year; his activities in British
politics dated back to the times of Disraeli; his position in
Great Britain had become as near that of an "elder statesman"
as is tolerable under the Anglo-Saxon system. By this time Page
had established the friendliest possible relations with this distinguished
man. Mr. Balfour had become Foreign Secretary in December, 1916,
in succession to Lord Grey. Greatly as Page regretted the resignation
of Grey, he was much gratified that Mr. Balfour had been selected
to succeed him. Mr. Balfour's record for twenty-five years had
been one of consistent friendliness toward the United States.
When President Cleveland's Venezuelan message, in 1896, had precipitated
a crisis in the relations of the two countries, it was Mr. Balfour's
influence which was especially potent in causing Great Britain
to modify its attitude and to accept the American demand for arbitration.
That action not only amicably settled the Venezuelan question;
it marked the beginning of a better feeling between the English-speaking
countries and laid the basis for that policy of benevolent neutrality
which Great Britain had maintained toward the United States in
the Spanish War. The excellent spirit which Mr. Balfour had shown
at this crisis he had manifested on many occasions since. In the
criticisms of the United States during the Lusitania troubles
Mr. Balfour had never taken part. The era of "neutrality"
had not ruffled the confidence which he had always felt in the
United States. During all this time the most conspicuous dinner
tables of London had rung with criticisms of American policy;
the fact was well known, however, that Mr. Balfour had never sympathized
with these reproaches; even when he was not in office, no unfriendly
word concerning the United States had ever escaped his lips.,
His feeling toward this country was well shown in a letter which
he wrote Page, in reply to one congratulating him on his seventieth
birthday. "I have now lived a long life," said Mr. Balfour,
"and most of my energies have been expended in political
work, but if I have been fortunate enough to contribute, even
in the smallest degree, to drawing closer the bonds that unite
our two countries, I shall have done something compared with which
all else that I may have attempted counts in my eyes as nothing."

Page's letters and notes contain many references to Mr. Balfour's
kindly spirit. On the day following the dismissal of Bernstorff
the American Ambassador lunched with the Foreign Secretary at
No. 4 Carlton Gardens.

"Mr. Balfour," Page reported to Washington, "gave
expression to the hearty admiration which he entertained for the
President's handling of a difficult task. He said that never for
a moment had he doubted the President's wisdom in the course he
was pursuing. He had the profoundest admiration for the manner
in which he had promptly broken with Germany after receiving Germany's
latest note. Nor had he ever entertained the slightest question
of the American people's ready loyalty to their Government or
to their high ideals. One of his intellectual pleasures, he added,
had long been contemplation of the United States as it is and,
even more, as its influence in the world will broaden. 'The world,'
said Mr. Balfour, 'will more and more turn on the Great Republic
as on a pivot.' "

Occasionally Mr. Balfour's discussion of the United States
would take a more pensive turn. A memorandum which Page wrote
a few weeks after the above touches another point:

.

March 27, 1917.

I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. Balfour this
afternoon. "It's sad to me," said he, " that we
are so unpopular, so much more unpopular than the French, in
your country. Why is it? The old schoolbooks?"

I doubted the school-book influence.

"Certainly their influence is not the main cause. It
is the organized Irish. Then it's the effect of the very fact
that the Irish question is not settled. You've had that problem
at your very door for 300 years. What's the matter that you don't
solve it?"

"Yes, yes,"---he saw it. But the plaintive tone
of such a man asking such a question was significant and interesting
and---sad.

Then I told him the curious fact that a British Government
made up of twenty individuals, every one of whom is most friendly
to the United States, will, when they act together as a Government,
do the most offensive things. I mentioned the blacklist; I mentioned
certain complaints that I then held in my hand---of Americans
here who are told by the British Government that they must turn
over to the British Government's agent in New York their American
securities which they hold in America!

There's a sort of imperious, arrogant, Tory action that comes
natural to the English Government, even when not natural to the

individual Englishman.

.

On April 5th, the day before the United States formally declared
war, Page notified Washington that the British Government wished
Mr. Balfour to go to the United States as the head of a Commission
to confer with our Government. "Mr. Balfour is chosen for
this mission," Page reported, "not only because he is
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but because he is personally
the most distinguished member of the Government." Page tells
the story in more detail in a letter to Mr. Polk, at that time
Counsellor of the State Department.

.

To Frank L. Polk

London, May 3, 1917.

DEAR MR. POLK:

. . . Mr. Balfour accurately represents British character,
British opinion, and the British attitude. Nobody who knows him
and knows British character and the British attitude ever doubted
that. I know his whole tribe, his home-life, his family connections,
his friends; and, of course, since he became Foreign Secretary,
I've come to know him intimately. When the question first came
up here of his going, of course I welcomed it enthusiastically.
About that time during a two-hour conversation he asked me why
the British were so unpopular in the United States. Among other
reasons I told him that our official people on both sides steadfastly
refused to visit one another and to become acquainted. Neither
he nor Lord Grey, nor Mr. Asquith, nor Mr. Lloyd George, had
ever been to the United States, nor any other important British
statesman in recent times, and not a single member of the Administration
was personally known to a single member of the British Government.
"I'll go," said he, "if you are perfectly sure
my going will be agreeable to the President." He himself
recalled the fact, during one of our several conversations just
before he left, that you had not come when he and Lord Grey had
invited you. If you had come, by the way, this era of a better
understanding would have begun then, and half our old troubles
would then have been removed. Keeping away from one another is
the best of all methods of keeping all old misunderstandings
alive and of making new ones.

I have no doubt that Mr. Balfour's visit will cause visits
of many first-class British statesmen during the war or soon
afterward. That's all we need to bring about a perfect understanding.

You may remember how I tried to get an official report about
the behaviour of the Benham,[1]and how, in the absence of that, Lord Beresford made a disagreeable
speech about our Navy in the House of Lords, and how, when months
later you sent me Roosevelt's[2]
letter, Lord Beresford expressed regret to me and said that he
would explain in another speech. I hadn't seen the old fellow
for a long time till a fortnight ago. He greeted me cheerily,
and I said, "I don't think I ought to shake hands with you
till you retract what you said about our navy." He insisted
on my dining with him. He invited Admiral Sims also, and those
two sailors had a jolly evening of it. Sims's coming has straightened
out all that naval misunderstanding and more. He is of immense
help to them and to us. But I'm going to make old Beresford's
life a burden till he gets up in the Lords and takes that speech
back publicly. He's really all right; but it's just as well to
keep the records right. The proceedings of the House of Lords
are handsomely bound and go into every gentleman's library. I
have seen two centuries of them in many a house.

We can now begin a distinctly New Era in the world's history
and in its management if we rise to the occasion: there's not
a shadow of doubt about that. And the United States can play
a part bigger than we have yet dreamed of if we prove big enough
to lead the British and the French instead of listening to Irish
and Germans. Neither England nor France is a democracy---far
from it. We can make them both democracies and develop their
whole people instead of about 10 per cent. of their people. We
have simply to conduct our affairs by a large national policy
and not by the complaints of our really non-American people.
See how a declaration of war has cleared the atmosphere!

We're happy yet, on rations. There are no potatoes. We have
meatless days. Good wheat meantime is sunk every day. The submarine
must be knocked out. Else the earth will be ruled by the German
bayonet and natural living will be verboten. We'll all
have to goose-step as the Crown Prince orders or---be shot. I
see they now propose that the United States shall pay the big
war indemnity in raw materials to the value of hundreds of billions
of dollars! Not just yet, I guess!

As we get reports of what you are doing, it's most cheerful.
I assure you, God has yet made nothing or nobody equal to the

American people; and I don't think He ever will or can.

Sincerely yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

.

One of the curious developments of this Balfour Mission was
a request from President Wilson that Great Britain should take
some decisive step for the permanent settlement of the Irish question.
"The President," this message ran, "wishes that,
when you next meet the Prime Minister, you would explain to him
that only one circumstance now appears to stand in the way of
perfect cooperation with Great Britain. All Americans who are
not immediately connected with Germany by blood ties find their
one difficulty in the failure of Great Britain so far to establish
a satisfactory form of self-government in Ireland. In the recent
debates in Congress on the War Resolution, this sentiment was
especially manifest. It came out in the speeches of those enemies
of the Declaration who were not Irish themselves nor representatives
of sections in which Irish voters possessed great influence---notably
members from the Southern States.

"If the American people were once convinced that there
was a likelihood that the Irish question would soon be settled,
great enthusiasm and satisfaction would result and it would also
strengthen the cooperation which we are now about to organize
between the United States and Great Britain. Say this in unofficial
terms to Mr. Lloyd George, but impress upon him its very great
significance. If the British Government should act successfully
on this matter, our American citizens of Irish descent and to
a great extent the German sympathizers who have made common cause
with the Irish, would join hands in the great common cause."

.

To the President

London, May 4,1917.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

. . . It is a remarkable commentary on the insularity of the
British and on our studied isolation that till Mr. Balfour went
over not a member of this Government had ever met a member of
our Administration! Quite half our misunderstandings were due
to this. If I had the making of the laws of the two governments,
I'd have a statutory requirement that at least one visit a year
by high official persons should be made either way. We should
never have had a blacklist, etc., if that had been done. When
I tried the quite humble task of getting Polk to come and the
excuse was made that he couldn't be spared from his desk---Mr.
President, I fear we haven't half enough responsible official
persons in our Government. I should say that no man even of Polk's
rank ought to have a desk: just as well give him a mill-stone.
Even I try not to have a desk: else I'd never get anything of
importance done; for I find that talks and conferences in my
office and in the government offices and wherever else I can
find out things take all my waking hours. The Foreign Office
here has about five high position men to every one in the State
Department. God sparing me, I'm going one of these days to prepare
a paper for our Foreign Affairs Committee on the Waste of Having
too Few High Grade Men in the Department of State; a Plea for
Five Assistant Secretaries for Every One Now Existing and for
Provision for International Visits by Them.

Here's an ancient and mouldy precedent that needs shattering---for
the coming of our country into its proper station and influence
in the world.

I am sure that Mr. Balfour's visit has turned out as well
as I hoped, and my hopes were high. He is one of the most interesting
men that I've ever had the honour to know intimately---he and
Lord Grey. Mr. Balfour is a Tory, of course; and in general I
don't like Tories, yet liberal he surely is---a sort of high-toned
Scotch democrat. I have studied him with increasing charm and
interest. Not infrequently when I am in his office just before
luncheon he says, "Come, walk over and we'll have lunch
with the family." He's a bachelor. One sister lives with
him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the wife of the great chemist and
Chancellor of Cambridge University) frequently visits him. Either
of those ladies could rule this Empire. Then there are nieces
and cousins always about---people of rare cultivation, every
one of 'em. One of those girls confirmed the story that "Uncle
Arthur" one day concluded that the niblick was something
more than a humble necessity of a bad golfer ---that it had positive
virtues of its own and had suffered centuries of neglect. He,
therefore, proceeded to play with the niblick only, till he proved
his case and showed that it is a club entitled to the highest
respect.

A fierce old Liberal fighter in Parliamentary warfare, who
entered politics about the time Mr. Balfour did, told me this
story the other day. "I've watched Balfour for about forty
years as a cat watches a rat. I hate his party. I hated him till
I learned better, for I hated that whole Salisbury crowd. They
wanted to Cecil everything. But I'll tell you, Sir, apropos of
his visit to your country, that in all those years he has never
spoken of the United States except with high respect and often
with deep affection. I should have caught him, if he had."

I went with him to a college in London one afternoon where
he delivered a lecture on Dryden, to prove that poetry can carry
a certain cargo of argument but that argument can't raise the
smallest flight of poetry. Dry as it sounds, it was as good a
literary performance as I recall I ever heard.

At his "family" luncheon, I've found Lord Milner
or Lord Lansdowne, or some literary man who had come in to find
out from Lady Rayleigh how to conduct the Empire or to write
a great book; and the modest old chemical Lord sits silent most
of the time and now and then breaks loose to confound them all
with a pat joke. This is a vigorous family, these Balfours. There's
one of them (a cousin of some sort, I think, of the Foreign Secretary)
who is a Lord of much of Scotland, about as tall as Ben Nevis
is high---a giant of a man. One of his sons was killed early
in the war and one was missing---whether dead or not he did not
know. Mrs. Page expressed her hope one day to the old man that
he had had news from his missing son. "No, no," said
he simply, "and me lady is awearying."

We've been lucky, Mr. President, in these days of immortal
horrors and of difficulties between two governments that did
not know one another---uncommonly lucky, in the large chances
that politics gives for grave errors, to have had two such men
in the Foreign Office here as Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour. There
are men who were mentioned for this post that would have driven
us mad---or to war with them. I'm afraid I've almost outgrown
my living hero worship. There isn't worshipful material enough
lying around in the world to keep a vigorous reverence in practice.
But these two gentlemen by birth and culture have at least sometimes
seemed of heroic size to me. It has meant much to know them well.
I shall always be grateful to them, for in their quiet, forceful
way they helped me much to establish right relations with these
people---which, pray God, I hope to retain through whatever new
trials we may yet encounter. For it will fall to us yet to loose
and to free the British, and a Briton set free is an American.
That's all you can do for a man or for a nation of men.

These Foreign Secretaries are not only men of much greater
cultivation than their Prime Ministers but of greater moral force.
But I've come to like Lloyd George very much. He'd never deliver
a lecture on Dryden, and he doesn't even play a good game of
golf; but he has what both Lord Grey and Mr. Balfour lack---a
touch of genius ---whatever that is---not the kind that takes
infinite pains, but the kind that acts as an electric light flashed
in the dark. He said to me the other day that experts have nearly
been the death of him. "The Government has experts, experts,
experts, everywhere. In any department where things are not going
well, I have found boards and committees and boards of experts.
But in one department at least I've found a substitute for them.
I let twenty experts go and I put in one Man, and things began
to move at once. Do you know any real Men? When you hear of any,
won't you let me know?"

A little while ago he dined with me, and, after dinner, I
took him to a corner of the drawing room and delivered your message
to him about Ireland. "God knows, I'm trying," he replied.
"Tell the President that. And tell him to talk to Balfour."
Presently he broke out---" Madmen, madmen---I never saw
any such task," and he pointed across the room to Sir Edward
Carson, his First Lord of the Admiralty-"Madmen." "But
the President's right. We've got to settle it and we've got to
settle it now." Carson and Jellicoe came across the room
and sat down with us. "I've been telling the Ambassador,
Carson, that we've got to settle the Irish question now---in
spite of you."

"I'll tell you something else we've got to settle now,"
said Carson. " Else it'll settle us. That's the submarines.
The press and public are working up a calculated and concerted
attack on Jellicoe and me, and, if they get us, they'll get you.
It's an attack on the Government made on the Admiralty, Prime
Minister," said this Ulster pirate whose civil war didn't
come off only because the big war was begun----"Prime Minister,
it may be a fierce attack. Get ready for it." Well, it has
been developing ever since. But I can't for the life of me guess
at the possible results of an English Parliamentary attack on
a government. It's like a baseball man watching a game of cricket.
He can't see when the player is out or why, or what caused it.
Of course, the submarine may torpedo Lloyd George and his Government.
It looks very like it may overturn the Admiralty, as Gallipoli
did. If this public finds out the whole truth, it will demand
somebody's head. But I'm only a baseball man; cricket is beyond
me.

But Lloyd George will outlive the war as an active force,
whatever happen to him in the meantime. He's too heavily charged
with electricity to stop activity. The war has ended a good many
careers that seemed to have long promise. It is ending more every
day. But there is only one Lloyd George, and, whatever else he
lack, he doesn't lack life.

I heard all the speeches in both Houses on the resolution
of appreciation of our coming into the war---Bonar Law's, Asquith's
(one of the best), Dillon's, a Labour man's, and, in the Lords,
Curzon's, Crewe's, the Archbishop's (who delivered in the course
of his remarks a benediction on me) and Bryce's (almost the best
of all). It wasn't "oratory," but it was well said
and well meant. They know how badly they need help and they do
mean to be as good to us as their benignant insularity will permit.
They are changing. I can't describe the great difference that
the war has made in them. They'll almost become docile in a little
more time.

And we came in in the nick of time for them---in very truth.
If we hadn't, their exchange would have gone down soon and they
know it. I shall never forget the afternoon I spent with Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law on that subject. They saw blue ruin
without our financial help. And now, if we can save them from
submarines, those that know will know how vital our help was:
Again, the submarine is the great and grave and perhaps the only
danger now. If that can be scotched, I believe the whole Teutonic
military structure would soon tumble. If not, the Germans may
go on as long as they can feed their army, allowing their people
to starve.

Of course, you know, we're on rations now---yet we suffer
no inconvenience on that score. But these queer people (they
are the most amusing and confusing and contradictory of all God's
creatures, these English, whose possibilities are infinite and
whose actualities, in many ways, are pitiful)---these queer people
are fiercely pursuing food-economy by discussing in the newspapers
whether a hen consumes more food than she produces, and whether
what dogs eat contains enough human food to justify the shooting
of every one in the Kingdom. That's the way we are coming down
to humble fare. But nothing can quite starve a people who all
live near the sea which yields fish enough near shore to feed
them wastefully.

All along this South shore, where I am to-day,[3]I see the Stars and Stripes;
and everywhere there is a demand for the words and music of the
Battle Hymn of the Republic and the Star Spangled Banner.

This our-new-Ally business is bringing me a lot of amusing
troubles. Theatres offer me boxes, universities offer me degrees,
hospitals solicit visits from me, clubs offer me dinners---I'll
have to get a new private secretary or two well-trained to say
"No" politely, else I shall not have my work done.
But all that will presently wear away as everything wears away
(quickly, too) in the grim face of this bloody monster of war
which is consuming men as a prairie fire consumes blades of grass.
There's a family that lives around the corner from this hotel.
One son is in the trenches, another is in a madhouse from shell-shock,
a third coming home wounded the other day was barely rescued
when a torpedo sunk a hospital ship and may lose his reason.
I suppose I saw one hundred men this afternoon on a single mile
of beach who had lost both legs. Through the wall from my house
in London is a hospital. A young Texan has been there, whose
legs are gone at the thighs and one arm at the elbow. God pity
us for not having organized the world better than this! We'll
do it, yet, Mr. President---you'll do it; and thank God for you.
If we do not organize Europe and make another such catastrophe
impossible, life will not be worth being born into except to
the few whose days happen to fall between recurring devastations

of the world.

Yours sincerely,

WALTER H. PAGE.

.

"I hope that the English people," Colonel House wrote
to Page about this time, "realize how successful Mr. Balfour's
visit to America really was. There is no man they could have sent
who could have done it better. He and the President got along
marvellously well. The three of us dined and spent the evening
together and it was delightful to see how sympathetic their minds
were."

A letter from Mr. Polk also discloses the impression which
Mr. Balfour made upon Washington:

.

From Frank L. Polk

Washington, May 25, 1917.

MY DEAR MR. PAGE:

I just want to get off a line to catch the pouch.

You probably know what a wonderful success the British Mission
has been, but I do not think you can realize what a deep impression
they have made on all of us. Mr. Balfour really won the affection
of us all, and I do not know when I was more sorry to have a
man leave than I was to have him go last night. He expressed
himself as having been very much impressed with his reception
and the way he was treated. He was most fair in all discussions,
and I think has a better understanding of our point of view.
I had the good fortune of being present at the financial and
the diplomatic conferences, and I think we all felt that we were
dealing with a sympathetic friend.

He and the President got on tremendously. The best evidence
of that was the fact that the President went up to Congress and
sat in the gallery while Mr. Balfour addressed the House. This
is without precedent.

The difficult problem of course was the blacklist and bunkering
agreement, but I think we are by that. The important thing now
is for the British to make all the concessions possible in connection
with the release of goods in Rotterdam and the release of goods
in Prize Court, though the cases have not been begun. Of course
I mean cases of merely suspicion rather than where there is evidence
of wrongdoing.

The sending of the destroyers and troops abroad is going to
do a great deal toward impressing our people with the fact that
we really are in the war. I do not think it is thoroughly borne
home on the majority yet what a serious road we have chosen.

With warm regards,

Yours faithfully,

FRANK L. POLK.

.

Mr. Polk's reference to the blacklist recalls an episode which
in itself illustrates the changed character of the relations that
had now been established between the American and the British
governments. Mr. Balfour discussed shipping problems for the most
part with Mr. Polk, under whose jurisdiction these matters fell.
As one of these conferences was approaching its end Mr. Balfour
slightly coughed, uttered an "er," and gave other indications
that he was about to touch upon a ticklish question.

"Before I go," he said, "there-er-is one subject
I would-er-like to say something about."

Mr. Polk at once grasped what was coming.

"I know what you have in mind," said Mr. Polk in
his characteristically quick way. "You want us to apply your
blacklist to neutrals."

In other words, the British hoped that the United States, now
that it was in the war, would adopt against South America and
other offenders those same discriminations which this country
had so fiercely objected to, when it was itself a neutral.

The British statesman gave Mr. Polk one of his most winning
smiles and nodded.

"Mr. Balfour," said Mr. Polk, "it took Great
Britain three years to reach a point where it was prepared to
violate all the laws of blockade. You will find that it will take
us only two months to become as great criminals as you are!"

Mr. Balfour is usually not explosive in his manifestations
of mirth, but his laughter, in reply to this statement, was almost
uproarious. And the State Department was as good as its word.
It immediately forgot all the elaborate "notes" and
"protests" which it had been addressing to Great Britain.
It became more inexorable than Great Britain had ever been in
keeping foodstuffs out of neutral countries that were contiguous
to Germany. Up to the time the United States entered the war,
Germany, in spite of the watchful British fleet, had been obtaining
large supplies from the United States through Holland, Denmark,
and the Scandinavian peninsula. But the United States now immediately
closed these leaks. In the main this country adopted a policy
of "rationing"; that is, it would furnish the little
nations adjoining Germany precisely the amount of food which they
needed for their own consumption. This policy was one of the chief
influences in undermining the German people and forcing their
surrender. The American Government extended likewise the blacklist
to South America and other countries, and, in doing so, it bettered
the instruction of Great Britain herself.

Though the whole story of the blockade thus seems finally to
have ended in a joke, the whole proceeding has its serious side.
The United States had been posing for three years as the champion
of neutral rights; the point of view of Washington had been that
there was a great principle at stake. If such a principle were
involved, it was certainly present in just the same degree after
the United States became belligerent as in the days when we were
neutrals. The lofty ideals by which the Administration had professed
to be guided should have still controlled its actions; the mere
fact that we, as a belligerent, could obtain certain advantages
would hardly have justified a great and high-minded nation in
abandoning its principles. Yet abandon them we did from the day
that we declared war. We became just as remorseless in disregarding
the rights of small states as Great Britain---according to our
numerous blockade notes---had been. Possibly, therefore, Mr. Balfour's
mirth was not merely sympathetic or humorous; it perhaps echoed
his discovery that our position for three years had really been
nothing but a sham; that the State Department had been. forcing
points in which it did not really believe, or in which it did
not believe when American interests were involved. At any rate,
this ending of our long argument with Great Britain was a splendid
justification for Page; his contention had always been that the
preservation of civilization was more important than the technicalities
of the international lawyers. And now the Wilson Administration,
by throwing into the waste basket all the finespun theories with
which it had been embarrassing the Allied cause since August 4,
1914, accepted---and accepted joyously---his point of view.

.

II

One of the first things which Mr. Balfour did, on his arrival
in Washington, was personally to explain to President Wilson about
the so-called "secret treaties."

The "secret treaty" that especially preyed upon Mr.
Wilson's mind, and which led to a famous episode at the Versailles
Conference, was that which had been made with Italy in 1915, as
consideration for Italy's participation in the war. Mr. Balfour,
in telling the President of these territorial arrangements with
Italy, naturally did not criticise his ally, but it was evident
that he regarded the matter as something about which the United
States should be informed.

"This is the sort of thing you have to do when you are
engaged in a war," he explained, and then he gave Mr. Wilson
the details.

Probably the most important information which Mr. Balfour and
the French and Italian Commissions brought to Washington was the
desperate situation of the Allied cause. On that point not one
of the visiting statesmen or military and naval advisers made
the slightest attempt at concealment. Mr. Balfour emphasized the
seriousness of the crisis in one of his earliest talks with Mr.
McAdoo, Secretary of the Treasury. The British statesman was especially
interested in the financial situation and he therefore took up
this matter at an early date with the Treasury Department.

"Mr. Balfour," said Mr. McAdoo, "before we make
any plans of financial assistance it is absolutely necessary that
we know precisely where we stand. The all-important thing is the
question as to how long the war is likely to last. If it is only
to last a few months, it is evident that we need to make very
different arrangements than if it is to last several years. Just
what must we make provision for? Let us assume that the United
States goes in with all its men and resources---that we dedicate
all our money, our manufacturing plants, our army, our navy, everything
we have got, to bringing the war to an end. How long will it take?"

Mr. Balfour replied that it would be necessary to consult his
naval and military advisers before he answered that question.
He said that he would return in a day or two and make an explicit
statement. He did so and his answer was this: Under these circumstances---that
the United States should make war to the full limit of its power,
in men and resources---the war could not be ended until the summer
or the autumn of 1919. Mr. McAdoo put the same question in the
same form to the French and Italian Missions and obtained precisely
the same answer.

Page's papers show that Mr. Balfour, in the early stages of
American participation, regarded the financial situation as the
thing which chiefly threatened the success of the Allied cause.
So much greater emphasis has been laid upon the submarine warfare
that this may at first seem rather a misreading of Great Britain's
peril. Yet the fact is that the high rate of exchange and the
depredatory U-boat represented almost identically the same danger.
The prospect that so darkened the horizon in the spring of 1917
was the possible isolation of Great Britain. England's weakness,
as always, consisted in the fact that she was an island, that
she could not feed herself with her own resources and that she
had only about six weeks' supply of food ahead of her at any one
time. If Germany could cut the lines of communication and so prevent
essential supplies from reaching British ports, the population
of Great Britain could be starved into surrender in a very brief
time, France would be overwhelmed, and the triumph of the Prussian
cause would be complete. That the success of the German submarine
campaign would accomplish this result was a fact that the popular
mind readily grasped. What it did not so clearly see, however,
was that the financial collapse of Great Britain would cut these
lines of communication quite as effectually as the submarine itself.
The British were practically dependent for their existence upon
the food brought from the United States, just as the Allied armies
were largely dependent upon the steel which came from the great
industrial plants of this country. If Great Britain could not
find the money with which to purchase these supplies, it is quite
apparent that they could not be shipped. The collapse of British
credit therefore would have produced the isolation of the British
Isles and led to a British surrender, just as effectively as would
the success of the German submarine campaign.

As soon as Bernstorff was sent home, therefore, and the participation
of this country in the war became extremely probable, Mr. Balfour
took up the financial question with Page.

.

To the President

March 5, 1917.

The inquiries which I have made here about financial conditions
disclose an international situation which is most alarming to
the financial and industrial outlook of the United States. England
has not only to pay her own war bills, but is obliged to finance
her Allies as well. Up to the present time she has done these
tasks out of her own capital. But she cannot continue her present
extensive purchases in the United States without shipping gold
as payment for them, and there are two reasons why she cannot
make large shipments of gold. In the first place, both England
and France must keep the larger part of the gold they have to
maintain issues of their paper at par; and, in the second place,
the German U-boat has made the shipping of gold a dangerous procedure
even if they had it to ship. There is therefore a pressing danger
that the Franco-American and Anglo-American exchange will be
greatly disturbed; the inevitable consequence will be that orders
by all the Allied Governments will be reduced to the lowest possible
amount and that trans-Atlantic trade will practically come to
an end. The result of such a stoppage will be a panic in the
United States. The world will therefore be divided into two hemispheres,
one of them, our own, will have the gold and the commodities:
the other, Great Britain and Europe, will need these commodities,
but it will have no money with which to pay for them. Moreover,
it will have practically no commodities of its own to exchange
for them. The financial and commercial result will be almost
as bad for the United States as for Europe. We shall soon reach
this condition unless we take quick action to prevent it. Great
Britain and France must have a credit in the United States which
will be large enough to prevent the collapse of world trade and
the whole financial structure of Europe.

If the United States declare war against Germany, the greatest
help we could give Great Britain and its Allies would be such
a credit. If we should adopt this policy, an excellent plan would
be for our Government to make a large investment in a Franco-British
loan. Another plan would be to guarantee such a loan. A great
advantage would be that all the money would be kept in the United
States. We could keep on with our trade and increase it, till
the war ends, and after the war Europe would purchase food and
an enormous supply of materials with which to reequip her peace
industries. We should thus reap the profit of an uninterrupted
and perhaps an enlarging trade over a number of years and we
should hold their securities in payment.

On the other hand, if we keep nearly all the gold and Europe
cannot pay for reestablishing its economic life, there may be
a world-wide panic for an indefinite period.

Of course we cannot extend such a credit unless we go to war
with Germany. But is there no way in which our Government might
immediately and indirectly help the establishment in the United
States of a large Franco-British credit without violating armed
neutrality? I do not know enough about our own reserve bank law
to form an opinion. But these banks would avert such a danger
if they were able to establish such a credit. Danger for us is
more real and imminent, I think, than the public on either side
the Atlantic understands. If it be not averted before its manifestations
become apparent, it will then be too late to save the day.

The pressure of this approaching crisis, I am certain, has
gone beyond the ability of the Morgan financial agency for the
British and French governments. The financial necessities of
the Allies are too great and urgent for any private agency to
handle, for every such agency has to encounter business rivalries
and sectional antagonisms.

It is not improbable that the only way of maintaining our
present preeminent trade position and averting a panic is by
declaring war on Germany. The submarine has added the last item
to the danger of a financial world crash. There is now an uncertainty
about our being drawn into the war; no more considerable credits
can be privately placed in the United States. In the meantime

a collapse may come.

PAGE.

.

Urgent as this message was, it really understated the desperate
condition of British and Allied finances. That the warring powers
were extremely pressed for money has long been known; but Page's
papers reveal for the first time the fact that they were facing
the prospect of bankruptcy itself. "The whole Allied combination
on this side the ocean are very much nearer the end of their financial
resources," he wrote in July, "than anybody has guessed
or imagined. We only can save them. . . . The submarines are steadily
winning the war. Pershing and his army have bucked up the French
for the moment. But for his coming there was more or less danger
of a revolution in Paris and of serious defection in the army.
Everybody here fears that the French will fail before another
winter of the trenches. Yet---the Germans must be still worse
off."

The matter that was chiefly pressing at the time of the Balfour
visit was the fact that the British balances in the New York banks
were in a serious condition. It should always be remembered, however,
that Great Britain was financing not only herself, but her Allies,
and that the difficult condition in which she now found herself
was caused by the not too considerate demands of the nations with
which she was allied in the war. Thus by April 6, 1917, Great
Britain had overdrawn her account with J. P. Morgan to the extent
of $400,000,000 and had no cash available with which to meet this
overdraft. This obligation had been incurred in the purchase of
supplies, both for Great Britain and the allied governments; and
securities, largely British owned stocks and bonds, had been deposited
to protect the bankers. The money was now coming due; if the obligations
were not met, the credit of Great Britain in this country would
reach the vanishing point. Though at first there was a slight
misunderstanding about this matter, the American Government finally
paid this over-draft out of the proceeds of the first Liberty
Loan. This act saved the credit of the allied countries; it was,
of course, only the beginning of the financial support that America
brought to the allied cause; the advances that were afterward
furnished from the American Treasury made possible the purchases
of food and supplies in enormous quantities. The first danger
that threatened, the isolation and starvation of Great Britain,
was therefore overcome. It was the joint product of Page's work
in London and that of the Balfour Commission in the United States.

.

III

Until these financial arrangements had been made there was
no certainty that the supplies which were so essential to victory
would ever leave the United States; this obstruction at the source
had now been removed. But the greater difficulty still remained.
The German submarines were lying off the waters south and west
of Ireland ready to sink the supply ships as soon as they entered
the prohibited zone. Mr. Balfour and his associates were working
also on this problem in Washington; and, at the same time, Page
and Admiral Sims and the British Admiralty were bending all their
energies in London to obtain immediate cooperation.

A remark which Mr. Balfour afterward made to Admiral Sims shows
the frightful nature of the problem which was confronting Great
Britain at that time.

"That was a terrible week we spent at sea in that voyage
to the United States," Mr. Balfour said. "We knew that
the German submarine campaign was succeeding. Their submarines
were destroying our shipping and we had no means of preventing
it. I could not help thinking that we were facing the defeat of
Great Britain."

Page's papers show that as early as February 25th he understood
in a general way the disheartening proportions of the German success.
"It is a momentous crisis," he wrote at that time. "The
submarines are destroying shipping at an appalling rate."
Yet it was not until Admiral Sims arrived in London, on April
9th, that the Ambassador learned all the details. In sending the
Admiral to England the Navy Department had acted on an earnest
recommendation from Page. The fact that the American Navy was
inadequately represented in the British capital had long been
a matter of embarrassment to him. The ability and personal qualifications
of our attachés had been unquestioned; but none of them
during the war had been men of high rank, and this in itself proved
to be a constant impediment to their success. While America was
represented by Commanders, Japan, Italy, and France had all sent
Admirals to London. Page's repeated requests for an American Admiral
had so far met with no response, but the probability that this
country would become involved in the war now gave new point to
his representations. In the latter part of March, Page renewed
his request in still more urgent form, and this time the President
and the Navy Department responded favourably. The result was that,
on April 9th, three days after the American declaration of war,
Admiral Sims and his flag-lieutenant, Commander Babcock, presented
themselves at tile American Embassy. There was little in the appearance
of these men to suggest a violent naval demonstration against
Germany. Both wore civilian dress, their instructions having commanded
them not to bring uniforms; both were travelling under assumed
names, and both had no more definite orders than to investigate
the naval situation and cable the results to Washington. In spite
of these attempts at secrecy, the British had learned that Admiral
Sims was on the way; they rejoiced not only in this fact, but
in the fact that Sims had been chosen, for there was no American
naval officer whose professional reputation stood so high in the
British Navy or who was so personally acceptable to British officialdom
and the British public. The Admiralty therefore met Admiral Sims
at Liverpool, brought him to London in a special train, and, a
few hours after his arrival, gave him the innermost secrets on
the submarine situation---secrets which were so dangerous that
not all the members of the British Cabinet had been let into them.

Page welcomed Admiral Sims with a cordiality which that experienced
sea veteran still gratefully remembers. He at once turned over
to him two rooms in the Embassy. "You can have everything
we've got," the Ambassador said. "If necessary to give
you room, we'll turn the whole Embassy force out into the street."
The two men had not previously met, but in an instant they became
close friends. A common sympathy and a common enthusiasm were
greatly needed at that crisis. As soon as Admiral Sims had finished
his interview with Admiral Jellicoe, he immediately sought out
the Ambassador and laid all the facts before him. Germany was
winning the war. Great Britain had only six weeks' food supply
on hand, and the submarines were sinking the ships at a rate which,
unless the depredations should be checked, meant an early and
unconditional surrender of the British Empire. Only the help of
the United States could prevent this calamity.

Page, of course, was aghast: the facts and figures Admiral
Sims gave him disclosed a situation which was even more desperate
than he had imagined. He advised the Admiral to cable the whole
story immediately to Washington. Admiral Sims at first had some
difficulty in obtaining the Admiralty's consent to doing this,
and the reason was the one with which Page had long been familiar
---the fear, altogether too justified, that the news would "leak"
out of Washington. Of course there was no suspicion in British
naval circles of the good faith of the Washington officials, but
important facts had been sent so many times under the seal of
the strictest secrecy and had then found their way into the newspapers
that there was a deep distrust of American discretion. Certainly
no greater damage could have been done the allied cause at that
time than to have the Germans learn how successfully their submarine
campaign was progressing. The question was referred to the Imperial
War Council and its consent obtained. The report, however, was
sent to the Navy Department in the British naval code, and decoded
in the British Embassy in Washington.

Admiral Sims's message gave all the facts about the submarine
situation, and concluded with the recommendation that the United
States should assemble all floating craft that could be used in
the anti-submarine warfare, destroyers, tugs, yachts, light cruisers,
and similar vessels, and send them immediately to Queenstown,
where they would do valuable service in convoying merchant vessels
and destroying the U-boats. At that time the American Navy had
between fifty and sixty destroyers that were patrolling the American
coast; these could have been despatched, almost immediately, to
the scene of operations; but, in response to this request, the
Department sent six to Queentown.

The next few months were very unhappy ones for Admiral Sims.
He was the representative in London of one of the world's greatest
naval powers, participating in the greatest war that had ever
enlisted its energies, yet his constant appeals for warships elicited
the most inadequate response, his well-reasoned recommendations
for meeting the crisis were frequently unanswered and at other
times were met with counter-proposals so childish that they seemed
almost to have originated in the brains of newspaper amateurs,
and his urgent pictures of a civilization rapidly going to wreck
were apparently looked upon with suspicion as the utterances of
a man who had been completely led astray by British guile. To
give a fair idea of Washington's neglect during this period it
is only necessary to point out that, for four months, Admiral
Sims occupied the two rooms in the Embassy directly above Page's,
with Commander Babcock as his only aid. Sims's repeated requests
to Secretary Daniels for an additional staff went unheeded. Had
it not been for the Admiral's constant daily association with
Page and the comfort and encouragement which the Ambassador gave
him, this experience would have been almost unbearable. In the
latter part of April, the Admiral's appeals to Washington having
apparently fallen on deaf cars, he asked Page to second his efforts.
The Admiral and Commander Babcock wrote another message, and drove
in a motor car to Brighton, where Page was taking a little rest.
The Admiral did not know just how strong a statement the Ambassador
would care to sponsor, and so he did not make this representation
as emphatic as the judgment of both men would have preferred.

The Admiral handed Page the paper, saying that he had prepared
it with the hope that the Ambassador would sign it and send it
directly to President Wilson.

"It is quite apparent," Admiral Sims said, "that
the Department doesn't believe what I have been saying. Or they
don't believe what the British are saying. They think that England
is exaggerating the peril for reasons of its own. They think I
am hopelessly pro-British and that I am being used. But if you'll
take it up directly with the President, then they may be convinced."

Page put on his spectacles, took the paper, and read it through.
Then, looking over the rim of his glasses in his characteristic
way, he leaned toward Admiral Sims and said:

"Admiral, it isn't half strong enough! I think I can write
a better despatch than that, myself! At least let me try."

He immediately took a pen and paper and in a few minutes he
had written his own version which he gave the Admiral to read.
The latter was delighted with it and in a brief time it was on
its way to Washington.

.

From: Ambassador Page. To: Secretary of State.

Sent: 27 April, 1917.

Very confidential for Secretary and President

There is reason for the greatest alarm about the issue of
the war caused by the increasing success of the German submarines.
I have it from official sources that during the week ending 22nd
April, 88 ships of 237,000 tons, allied and neutral, were lost.
The number of vessels unsuccessfully attacked indicated a great
increase in the number of submarines in action.

This means practically a million tons lost every month till
the shorter days of autumn come. By that time the sea will be
about clear of shipping. Most of the ships are sunk to the westward
and southward of Ireland. The British have in that area every
available anti-submarine craft, but their force is so insufficient
that they hardly discourage the submarines.

The British transport of troops and supplies is already strained
to the utmost, and the maintenance of the armies in the field
is threatened. There is food enough here to last the civil population
only not more than six weeks or two months.

Whatever help the United States may render at any time in
the future, or in any theatre of the war, our help is now more
seriously needed in this submarine area for the sake of all the
Allies than it can ever be needed again, or anywhere else.

After talking over this critical situation with the Prime
Minister and other members of the Government, I cannot refrain
from most strongly recommending the immediate sending over of
every destroyer and all other craft that can be of anti-submarine
use. This seems to me the sharpest crisis of the war, and the
most dangerous situation for the Allies that has arisen or could
arise.

If enough submarines can be destroyed in the next two or three
months, the war will be won, and if we can contribute effective
help immediately, it will be won directly by our aid. I cannot
exaggerate the pressing and increasing danger of this situation.
Thirty or more destroyers and other similar craft sent by us

immediately would very likely be decisive.

There is no time to be lost.

(Signed) PAGE.

.

This cablegram had a certain effect. The reply came from Washington
that "eventually" thirty-six destroyers would be sent.

Page's letters of this period are full of the same subject.

.

To the President

London, May 4, 1917.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

The submarines have become a very grave danger. The loss of
British and allied tonnage increases with the longer and brighter
days---as I telegraphed you, 237,000 tons last week; and the
worst of it is, the British are not destroying them. The Admiralty
publishes a weekly report which, though true, is not the whole
truth. It is known in official circles here that the Germans
are turning out at least two a week---some say three; and the
British are not destroying them as fast as new ones are turned
out. If merely the present situation continue, the war will pretty
soon become a contest of endurance under hunger, with an increasing
proportion of starvation. Germany is yet much the worse off,
but it will be easily possible for Great Britain to suffer to
the danger point next winter or earlier unless some decided change
be wrought in this situation.

The greatest help, I hope, can come from us---our destroyers
and similar armed craft---provided we can send enough of them
quickly. The area to be watched is so big that many submarine
hunters are needed. Early in the war the submarines worked near
shore. There are very many more of them now and their range is
one hundred miles, or even two hundred, at sea.

The public is becoming very restive with its half-information,
and it is more and more loudly demanding all the facts. There
are already angry threats to change the personnel of the Admiralty;
there is even talk of turning out the Government. "We must
have results, we must have results." I hear confidentially
that Jellicoe has threatened to resign unless the Salonica expedition
is brought back: to feed and equip that force requires too many
ships.

And there are other troubles impending. Norway has lost so
many of her ships that she dare not send what are left to sea.
Unarmed they'll all perish. If she arm them, Germany will declare
war against her. There is a plan on foot for the British to charter
these Norwegian ships and to arm them, taking the risk of German
war against Norway. If war come (as it is expected) England must
then defend Norway the best she can. And then England may
ask for our big ships to help in these waters. All this is
yet in the future, but possibly not far in the future.

For the present the only anti-submarine help is the help we
may be able to give to patrol the wide area off Ireland. If we
had one hundred destroyers to send, the job there could, I am
told, be quickly done. A third of that number will help mightily.
At the present rate of destruction more than four million tons
will be sunk before the summer is gone.

Such is this dire submarine danger. The English thought that
they controlled the sea; the Germans, that they were invincible
on land. Each side is losing where it thought itself strongest.

Admiral Sims is of the greatest help imaginable. Of course,
I gave him an office in one of our Embassy buildings, and the
Admiralty has given him an office also with them. He spends much
of his time there, and they have opened all doors and all desks
and drawers to him. He strikes me (and the English so regard
him) as a man of admirable judgment---unexcitable and indefatigable.
I hope we'll soon send a general over, to whom the War Department
will act similarly. Hoover, too, must have a good man here as,
I dare say, he has already made known. These will cover the Navy,
the Army, Food, and Shipping.

Perhaps a Censor and an Intelligence (Secret Service) group
ought to come. I mean these for permanent---at least indefinite---service.
Exchange visits by a Congressional Committee (such as the French
and British make) and by high official persons such as members
of your Cabinet (such also as the French and British make)---you

will have got ideas about these from Mr. Balfour.

W. H. P.

.

In the latter part of June Admiral Sims went to Queenstown.
Admiral Bayly, who directed the operation of the anti-submarine
forces there, had gone away for a brief rest, and Admiral Sims
had taken over the command of both the British and American forces
at that point. This experience gave Admiral Sims a first-hand
picture of a really deplorable situation. The crisis was so desperate
that he made another appeal to Page.

I think I have made it plain therein that the Allies are losing
the war; that it will be already lost when the loss of shipping
reaches the point where fully adequate supplies cannot be maintained
on the various battle fronts.

I cannot understand why our Government should hesitate to
send the necessary anti-submarine craft to this side.

There are at least seventeen more destroyers employed on our
Atlantic coast, where there is no war, not to mention
numerous other very useful anti-submarine craft, including sea-going
tugs, etc.

Can you not do something to bring our Government to an understanding
of how very serious the situation is?

Would it not be well to send another telegram to Mr. Lansing
and the President, and also send them the enclosed correspondence?

I am sending this by mail because I may be somewhat delayed

in returning to London.

Very sincerely yours,

WM. S. SIMS.

.

Page immediately acted on this suggestion.

.

Most confidential for the Secretary of Slate and President only

Sims, sends me by special messenger from Queenstown the most

alarming reports of the submarine situation which are confirmed
by the Admiralty here. He says that the war will be won or lost
in this submarine zone within a few months. Time is of the essence
of the problem, and anti-submarine craft which cannot be assembled
in the submarine zone almost immediately may come too late. There
is, therefore, a possibility that this war may become a war between
Germany and the United States alone. Help is far more urgently
and quickly needed in this submarine zone than anywhere else

in the whole war area.

PAGE.

.

The United States had now been in the war for three months
and only twenty-eight of the sixty destroyers which were available
had been sent into the field. Yet this latest message of Page
produced no effect, and, when Admiral Sims returned from Queenstown,
the two men, almost in despair, consulted as to the step which
they should take next. What was the matter? Was it that Washington
did not care to get into the naval war with its full strength,
or was it that it simply refused to believe the representations
of its Admiral and its Ambassador? Admiral Sims and Page went
over the whole situation and came to the conclusion that Washington
regarded them both as so pro-British that their reports were subject
to suspicion. Just as Page had found that the State Department,
and its "trade advisers," had believed that the British
were using the blockade as a means of destroying American trade
for the benefit of Britain, so now he believed that Mr. Daniels
and Admiral Benson, the Chief of Naval Operations, evidently thought
that Great Britain was attempting to lure American warships into
European waters, to undergo the risk of protecting British commerce,
while British warships were kept safely in harbour. Page suggested
that there was now only one thing left to do, and that was to
request the British Government itself to make a statement to President
Wilson that would substantiate his own messages.

"Whatever else they think of the British in Washington,"
he said, "they know one thing---and that is that a British
statesman like Mr. Balfour will not lie."

Mr. Balfour by this time had returned from America. The fact
that he had established these splendid personal relations with
Mr. Wilson, and that he had impressed the American public so deeply
with his sincerity and fine purpose, made him especially valuable
for this particular appeal. Page and Admiral Sims therefore went
to the Foreign Office and laid all the facts before him. Their
own statements, Page informed the Foreign Secretary, were evidently
regarded as hysterical and biased by an unreasoning friendliness
to Great Britain. If Mr. Balfour would say the same things over
his own signature, then they would not be disbelieved.

Mr. Balfour gladly consented. He called in Admiral Jellicoe
and asked him to draft a despatch, so that all the technical facts
would be completely accurate. He also consulted with Sir Edward
Carson, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Then Mr. Balfour put
the document in its final shape and signed it. It was as follows:

.

Mr. Balfour to the President

June 30, 1917.

The forces at present at the disposal of the British Admiralty
are not adequate to protect shipping from submarine attack in
the danger zone round the British Islands. Consequently shipping
is being sunk at a greater rate than it can be replaced by new
tonnage of British origin.

The time will come when, if the present rate of loss continues,
the available shipping, apart from American contribution, will
be insufficient to bring to this country sufficient foodstuffs
and other essentials, including oil fuel. The situation in regard
to our Allies, France, and Italy, is much the same.

Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to add to our forces
as a first step, pending the adoption or completion of measures
which will, it is hoped, eventually lead to the destruction of
enemy submarines at a rate sufficient to ensure safety of our
sea communications.

The United States is the only allied country in a position
to help. The pressing need is for armed small craft of every
kind available in the area where commerce concentrates near the
British and French coasts. Destroyers, submarines, gunboats,
yachts, trawlers, and tugs would all give invaluable help, and
if sent in sufficient numbers would undoubtedly save a situation
which is manifestly critical. But they are required now and in
as great numbers as possible. There is no time for delay.

The present method of submarine attack is almost entirely
by torpedo with the submarine submerged. The gun defense of merchant
ships keeps the submarine below the surface but does no more;
offensively against a submerged submarine it is useless, and
the large majority of the ships torpedoed never see the attacking
submarine until the torpedo has hit the ship.[5]

The present remedy is, therefore, to prevent the submarine
from using its periscope for fear of attack by bomb or ram from
small craft, and this method of defense for the shipping and
offense against the submarine requires small craft in very large
numbers.

The introduction of the convoy system, provided there are
sufficient destroyers to form an adequate screen to the convoy,
will, it is hoped, minimize losses when it is working, and the
provision of new offensive measures is progressing; but for the
next few months there is only one safeguard, viz., the immediate
addition to patrols of every small vessel that can possibly be

sent to European waters.

.

Page, moreover, kept up his own appeal:

.

To the President

July 5th.

Strictly confidential to the President and the Secretary

The British Cabinet is engaging in a threatening controversy
about the attitude which they should take toward the submarine
peril. There is a faction in the Admiralty which possesses the
indisputable facts and which takes a very disheartening view
of the situation. This group insists that the Cabinet should
make a confession at least to us of the full extent of the danger
and that it should give more information to the public. The public
does not feel great alarm simply because it has been kept in
too great ignorance. But the political faction is so far the
stronger. It attempts to minimize the facts, and, probably for
political reasons, it refuses to give these discouraging facts
wide publicity. The politicians urge that it is necessary to
conceal the full facts from the Germans. They also see great
danger in throwing the public into a panic.

Mr. Lloyd George is always optimistic and he is too much inclined
to yield his judgment to political motives. In his recent address
in Glasgow he gave the public a comforting impression of the
situation. But the facts do not warrant the impression which
he gave.

This dispute among the political factions is most unfortunate
and it may cause an explosion of public feeling at any time.
Changes in the Cabinet may come in consequence. If the British
public knew all the facts or if the American people knew them,
the present British Government would probably fall. It is therefore
not only the submarine situation which is full of danger. The

political situation is in a dangerous state also.

PAGE.

.

To Arthur W. Page

Wilsford Manor, Salisbury, July 8, 1917.

DEAR ARTHUR:

Since admirals and generals began to come from home, they
and the war have taken my time so completely, day and night,
that I haven't lately written you many things that I should like
to tell you. I'll try here---a house of a friend of ours where
the only other guest besides your mother and me is Edward Grey.
This is the first time I've seen him since he left office. Let
me take certain big subjects in order and come to smaller things
later:

1. The German submarines are succeeding to a degree that the
public knows nothing about. These two things are true: (a) The
Germans are building submarines faster than the English sink
them. In this way, therefore, they are steadily gaining. (b)
The submarines are sinking freight ships faster than freight
ships are being built by the whole world. In this way, too, then,
the Germans are succeeding. Now if this goes on long enough,
the Allies' game is up. For instance, they have lately sunk so
many fuel oil ships, that this country may very soon be in a
perilous condition---even the Grand Fleet may not have enough
fuel. Of course the chance is that oil ships will not continue
to fall victims to the U-boats and we shall get enough through
to replenish the stock. But this illustrates the danger, and
it is a very grave danger.

The best remedy so far worked out is the destroyer. The submarines
avoid destroyers and they sink very, very few ships that are
convoyed. If we had destroyers enough to patrol the whole approach
(for, say, 250 miles) to England, the safety of the sea would
be very greatly increased; and if we had enough to patrol and
to convoy every ship going and coming, the damage would be reduced
to a minimum. The Admiral and I are trying our best to get our
Government to send over 500 improvised destroyers---yachts, ocean-going
tugs---any kind of swift craft that can be armed. Five hundred
such little boats might end the war in a few months; for the
Germans are keeping the spirit of their people and of their army
up by their submarine success. If that success were stopped they'd
have no other cry half so effective. If they could see this in
Washington as we see it, they'd do it and do it not halfway but
with a vengeance. If they don't do it, the war may be indefinitely
prolonged and a wholly satisfactory peace may never be made.
The submarine is the most formidable thing the war has produced---by
far---and it gives the German the only earthly chance he has
to win. And he may substantially win by it yet. That's what the
British conceal. In fact, half of them do not see it or believe
it. But nothing is truer, or plainer. One hundred thousand submarine
chasers next year may be worth far less than 500 would be worth
now, for next year see how few ships may be left! The mere arming
of ships is not enough. Nearly all that are sunk are armed. The
submarine now carries a little periscope and a big one, each
painted the colour of the sea. You can't see a little periscope
except in an ocean as smooth as glass. It isn't bigger than a
coffee cup. The submarine thus sinks its victims without ever
emerging or ever being seen. As things now stand, the Germans
are winning the war, and they are winning it on the sea; that's
the queer and the most discouraging fact. My own opinion is that
all the facts ought to be published to all the world. Let the
Germans get all the joy they can out of the confession. No matter,
if the Government and the people of the United States knew all
the facts, we'd have 1,000 improvised destroyers (yachts, tugs,
etc., etc.) armed and over here very quickly. Then the tide would
turn.

Then there'd be nothing to fear in the long run. For the military
authorities all agree that the German Army is inferior to the
British and French and will be whipped. That may take a long
time yet; but of the result nobody who knows seems to have any
doubt---unless the French get tired and stop. They have periods
of great war weariness and there is real danger that they may
quit and make a separate peace. General Pershing's presence has
made the situation safe for the moment. But in a little while
something else spectacular and hopeful may be required to keep
them in line.

Such is an accurate picture of the war as it is now, and it
is a dangerous situation.

2. The next grave danger is financial. The European Allies
have so bled the English for money that the English would by
this time probably have been on a paper money basis (and of course
all the Allies as well) if we had not come to their financial
aid. And we've got to keep our financial aid going to them to
prevent this disastrous result. That wouldn't at once end the
war, if they had all abandoned specie payments; but it would
be a frightfully severe blow and it might later bring defeat.
That is a real danger. And the Government at Washington, I fear,
does not know the full extent of the danger. They think that
the English are disposed to lie down on them. They don't realize
the cost of the war. This Government has bared all this vast
skeleton to me; but I fear that Washington imagines that part
of it is a deliberate scare. It's a very real danger.

Now, certain detached items:

Sims is the idol of the British Admiralty and he is doing
his job just as well as any man could with the tools and the
chance that he has. He has made the very best of the chance and
he has completely won the confidence and admiration of this side
of the world.

Pershing made an admirable impression here, and in France
he has simply set them wild with joy. His coming and his little
army have been worth what a real army will be worth later. It
is well he came to keep the French in line.

The army of doctors and nurses have had a similar effect.

Even the New England saw-mill units have caused a furor of
enthusiasm. They came with absolute Yankee completeness of organization---with
duplicate parts of all their machinery, tents, cooks, pots, and
pans, and everything ship-shape. The only question they asked
was: "Say, where the hell are them trees you want sawed
up?" That's the way to do a job! Yankee stock is made high
here by such things as that.

We're getting a crowd of Yankee lecturers on the United States
to go up and down this Kingdom. There's the greatest imaginable
curiosity to hear about the United States in all kinds of society
from munition workers to universities. I got the British Government
to write Buttrick[6]
to come as its guest, and the Rockefeller Boards rose to the
occasion. He'll probably be along presently. If he hasn't already
sailed when you get this, see him and tell him to make arrangements
to have pictures sent over to him to illustrate his lectures.
Who else could come to do this sort of a job?

I am myself busier than I have ever been. The kind of work
the Embassy now has to do is very different from the work of
the days of neutrality. It continues to increase---especially
the work that I have to do myself. But it's all pleasant now.
We are trying to help and no longer to hinder. To save my life
I don't see how the Washington crowd can look at themselves in
a mirror and keep their faces straight. Yesterday they were bent
on sending everything into European neutral states. The foundations
of civilization would give way if neutral trade were interfered
with. Now, nothing must go in except on a ration basis. Yesterday
it must be a peace without victory. Now it must. be a complete
victory, every man and every dollar thrown in, else no peace
is worth having. I don't complain. I only rejoice. But I'm glad
that kind of a rapid change is not a part of my record. The German
was the same beast yesterday that he is to-day; and it makes
a simple-minded, straight-minded man like me wonder which attitude
was the (or is the) attitude of real conviction. But this doesn't
bother me now as a real problem---only as a speculation. What
we call History will, I presume, in time work this out. But History
is often a kind of lie. But never mind that. The only duty of
mankind now is to win. Other things can wait.

I walked over to Stonehenge and back (about six miles) with
Lord Grey (Sir Edward, you know) and we, like everybody else,
fell to talking about when the war may end. We know as well as
anybody and no better than anybody else. I have very different
moods about it---no convictions. It seems to me to depend, as
things now are, more on the submarines than on anything else.
If we could effectually discourage them so that the Germans would
have to withdraw them and could no more keep up the spirit of
their people by stories of the imminent starvation of England,
I have a feeling that the hunger and the war weariness of the
German people would lead them to force an end. But, the more
they are called on to suffer the more patriotic do they think
themselves and they may go on till they drop dead in their tracks.

What I am really afraid of is that the Germans may, before
winter, offer all that the Western Allies most want ---the restoration
of Belgium and France, the return of Alsace-Lorraine, etc., in
the West and the surrender of the Colonies---provided Austria
is not dismembered. That would virtually leave them the chance
to work out their Middle Europe scheme and ultimately there'd
probably have to be another war over that question. That's the
real eventuality to be feared---a German defeat in the West but
a German victory in the Southeast. Everybody in Europe is so
war weary that such a plan may succeed.

On the other hand, what Hoover and Northcliffe fear may come
true---that the Germans are going to keep up the struggle for
years---till their armies are practically obliterated, as Lee's
army was. If the Allies were actually to kill (not merely wound,
but actually kill) 5,000 Germans a day for 300 days a year, it
would take about four years to obliterate the whole German Army.
There is the bare possibility, therefore, of a long struggle
yet. But I can't believe it. My dominant mood these days is an
end within a very few months after the submarines are knocked
out. Send over, therefore, 1,000 improvised destroyers the next
two months, and I'll promise peace by Christmas. Otherwise I
can make no promises. That's all that Lord Grey and I know, and
surely we are two wise men. What, therefore, is the use in writing
any more about this?

The chief necessity that grows upon me is that all the facts
must be brought out that show the kinship in blood and ideals
of the two great English-speaking nations. We were actually coming
to believe ourselves that we were part German and Slovene and
Pole and What-not, instead of essentially being Scotch and English.
Hence the unspeakable impudence of your German who spoke of eliminating
the Anglo-Saxon element from American life! The truth should
be forcibly and convincingly told and repeated to the end of
the chapter, and our national life should proceed on its natural
historic lines, with its proper historic outlook and background.

We can do something to bring this about.

Affectionately,

W. H. P.

.

The labour of getting the American Navy into the war was evidently
at first a difficult one, but the determination of Page and Admiral
Sims triumphed, and, by August and September, our energies were
fully engaged. And the American Navy made a record that will stand
everlastingly to its glory. Without its help the German submarines
could never have been overcome.

↑The reference is to the attack made in October, 1916, by the German Submarine U-53, off Nantucket on several British ships. An erroneous newspaper account said that the Benham, an American destroyer, had moved in a way that facilitated the operations of the German submarine. This caused great bitterness in England, until Page showed the Admiralty a report from the Navy Department proving that the story was false

↑This, of course, is Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1917.

↑This letter is dated London and was probably begun there. It is evident, however, that the latter part was written at Brighton, where the Ambassador was taking a brief holiday.